My Brush With Fame

I was seated against a green screen and a female producer situated behind a camera proceeded to talk to me for two hours about my experiences in the wild world that is online dating.
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A few months ago, I wrote a blog for the dating site Mesh about my 15 minutes of fame. Well, my almost fifteen minutes. At the time, ABC had ghosted me by not following up on the online dating documentary I'd interviewed for a chance to be a part of. In an ironic twist of fate, after what I had thought to be a great meeting, they'd dropped me like it was hot.

Fast forward to a few months later when the team over at ABC decided to modify the scope of the project and were still in the market for online daters rife with stories of dates gone awry. We had another brief phone chat/interview where they explained that now, they were instead going to be creating a documentary style special for Hulu featuring daters in NYC and California and they did in fact want to include me.

Well, this new project not only sounded much more appealing than the original plan (which would have involved my allowing TV cameras to join me on my dates--AWKWARD) but also involved only a mere two-hour contribution. The experience, unpaid of course, would have been far less enjoyable had I been required to find time in my already crazy schedule to accommodate the necessary film time. I therefore jumped at the chance, set up my studio time and waited for the day to come.

The day of, I ventured to a set in Chelsea where they sat me down for 45 minutes of makeup. I'm not much for makeup as a general rule, so after about a pound of foundation and just as much eyeliner and lipstick was applied to my face, I was apparently ready (albeit massively uncomfortable).

I was seated against a green screen and a female producer situated behind a camera proceeded to talk to me for two hours about my experiences in the wild world that is online dating. Prior to this meeting, I'd had mild concerns about whether it would be awkward talking to a stranger about very personal elements of my love life. What would they ask? Would I over share? Would I make myself sound foolish? All these thoughts running through my head, I sat down and just relaxed into the conversation, communicating with the woman as though I was talking to a friend.

Two hours later, I felt oddly relaxed--giddy even--at having been given a chance to voice all of the silly, awkward, awesome moments in my dating life. The conversation flowed and she told me they'd gotten great footage. I asked if everyone would be included in the documentary and she confirmed that we would. So I sat back and waited for the release date.

Last week the documentary launched and if you're so inclined, you can check it out here. If you want to see my 5 whole seconds of screen time, fast forward to minute 11:30 (or so) and then again for another second or two at 13 minutes. I don't think I look my best or even sound all that articulate. But hey, it felt pretty nice to get those 15 minutes after all.

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